The point isn’t so much the quality of the code itself.
The point is that AI is an inefficient power-wasting piece of trash, and the data centres that power it have significant negative impacts on people and the environment, all for the sake of devs being lazy idiots. And you’d have to be an idiot to let AI take away your skills.
The point is also that this is the pre-enshittification version of AI, and any person or system foolish enough to become dependent on it will get exploited to the best of AI companies’ abilities.
Good, someone with morals
Personally i find debian change of policies to include proprietary firmwares by default worst than this
I’m not an AI evangelist but I am open-minded. I think Debian’s decision is balanced, and more importantly realistic.
There’s a difference between vibe coding and using AI to improve productivity. I’m a dev and pretty much everyone I know is using AI in some way. Yes they’ll lose contributors initially but Debian would lose more in the long run if they’d outright banned it.
For all those who are saying ‘AI supports fascists’ - the most popular models right now are Chinese. Very oppressive and paranoid government but definitely not fascist.
For all those that say ‘AI causes global warming’ - you’re correct, but unless you’ve got your own solar panels, so does your non-AI gaming rig. And your gas-driven car.
Agreed. I think they should have pushed for stronger disclosure requirements, but I also realise that isn’t actually enforceable.
I also find it very telling that people will talk about the negative parts of AI, but not acknowledge other automation tools that perpetuate the same problems. My experience is that most people’s complaints have a real basis, but they are just mis-diagnosed.
The problems seem to be our economic and societal structures, and AI is the new fancy tool that exacerbates those problems. But I’ve not heard a good reason why AI itself is that problem.
I disagree. You are an AI evangelist and quite closed-minded. Having a “balanced” approach, if there was one, would be to label any AI usage explicitly. If you’re afraid to label your AI usage, you’re a fucking coward.
But, damn, let’s not blame the billion dollar data centers for global warming, guys! It’s the individual decisions you make every day that kills the planet! If you believe this, the AI has fried your brain. It’s not one authoritarian government, it’s a different one! Actual paste-eating behavior. My work has improved with LLM usage! A common saying from people who were not good at their job, and are somehow now worse without them realizing it.
Any decent developer I have found has hated LLMs because they do not work anywhere near as well as people who are shit at things think they do. Personally, I don’t really like smashing the Skinner Box button hoping the output works this time because I like programming, and having Claude rape my codebase seems like a bad idea to me if I ever want to go back in there. But, then again, I like knowing how my code works, so maybe I should just lobotomize myself and I’ll understand why you like it so much.
Wow. You know, it is possible to have a discussion and even disagree with people without being a nasty peice of work?
I don’t have discussions with people that think the problem behind LLMs with high energy and water usage is that people use cars too much. Literally no one wants to subsidize their fucking local data center. Plus, you definitely ALSO use a car, so you’re not even better than the people you are trying to criticize because ChatGPT has rotted that portion of your brain from disuse. Frankly, I’ll be a nasty piece of work if it gets it through your thick fucking skull that AI is shit, most people know it’s shit, and you are likely shittier at everything you do using it. But, sure, complain about my tone, and never my message, because all you AI bros get so fucking butthurt by anyone saying anything bad about AI. Just call me a Luddite already or whatever and then go cry in your AI discord.
I think it’s helpful to separate the problems of the technology itself from all the BS that big tech companies engage in when developing and pushing it.
Say you only use small, open-weight models that are hosted locally in a data center that is conscientious, environmentally clean, has strict data privacy policies and doesn’t pull the bullshit big-tech do.
You use them minimally and responsibly, you don’t over-rely on them. Is there a problem in that case?
You use them minimally and responsibly, you don’t over-rely on them. Is there a problem in that case?
Responsibly is the key word there. I.e. vibe-coding an entire project full of security risks without understanding the architecture or languages used. Vs. using LLMs to error check code, brainstorm a project, write code you feel confident you can review yourself.
Also, like you say, hosting locally. Or using a provider like Mistral that is European, not evil, uses France’s abundant nuclear power…
There is no such thing as Responsibly if there is no disclosure.
I sort-of agree, but what are you disclosing?
If a project on github was 100% vibe coded with no (initial) human review - I’d want to know that.
If a project was 60% hand coded, 40% vibes but reviewed by a human … yeah in the interests of openness it doesn’t hurt to disclose that.
If a project was 100% hand cranked but checked by an LLM? If its open source I’m not sure I need to know that.
If a project was 100% hand cranked and human-reviewed, is open source but the dev used an LLM to keep a to do list of tasks… no I don’t need to know that.
And like someone else pointed out - how exactly do you verify that AI was not used at all for any part of a project?
Also, you know Microsoft will be vibe-coding its products. Would that stop you using Windows, Xbox, M365 etc?
Also, a ban without control isn’t a ban. And making sure that not a single line of code was writen with the help of some AI seems more than complicated… is it just possible?
And how much working time would it take to audit all packages to make sure it is 100% wrote by some human?
It seems more realistic (and more honnest) to allow the part that would not be found by a reasonable audit of the code.
very oppressive and paranoid, bit definitely not fascist.
That is … an interesting take, especially taking the Uyghur genocide into account.
Fascism is far-right. China is sort-of Communist, which is far-left.
Thus China is not fascist. Still a brutal, oppressive borderline-genocidal regime, but not fascist.
China is authoritarian, and that’s sort of the problem. That’s why the US is bad, bozo. But, sure, why don’t we point out all the definitely not capitalism that China is doing so you can pretend that all those Uyghurs aren’t being genocided, nor that the AI surveillance state they’ve got going on to censor and disappear people. Damn, dude, I’m glad I can pick between these two shitty governments.
Well Debian has been a fun ride for the last 20 years or so… Wonder what’s next…
FreeBSD
And here I was suspecting myself of looking for elitism for my thoughts of switching to some *BSD system
the distro you like is enshitifying so you’re switching to an OS with an even more permissive, business-friendly license, huh? why not find another GPL OS instead?
Is there another GPL OS instead? I am a fan of the GNU Hurd, but sadly I cannot run it on my hardware. The team of devs is really small, and it is amazing what they have done in all these years.
because I am not switching. another Linux project gives out some suspicious sounds, so I find myself thinking that moving to another OS altogether might turn out a good idea after all, besides the fun of learning something new
Yeah, I just heard the results of the vote yesterday (been traveling), so I plan on trying to replace Debian with NetBSD on my laptop as soon as I catch up post-vacation.
So Open-Source and FOSS projects collectively decided that they want to jump on half-sunken ship in the middle of the ocean?
Amazing.
Time to learn HolyC and make your own
forkdenomination of TempleOS xDIs it a half sunken ship? I’ve been following AI in software for a while now, even though all signs point to failure and a crash, it just keeps going and people adopt it more.
Hot take: LLMs is the best thing has happened to open source movement:
- software copyright is defeated and basically eliminated in practice
- reverse engineering is so accessible that proprietary protocols cannot be hidden and can be reimplemented by AI agents as free software
- open weight LLMs are incredibly competitive and run on general hardware
- linux is de facto winner in all computing and rising in desktop and gaming niches
We’re literally in the golden age of free software
Llms have been great for finding and fixing bugs and cranking out code, but the systems that allow for generation of code at a direct cost of dollars as opposed to the overhead of managing and employing programmers aren’t under the intense pressure to not redo old work and so are disincentivized from either creating or contributing to open source projects.
That would be cool and all, but people stopped reading their code. At work if I can not explain every line of my PR, it will get rejected. I use it as a powerful tool but a lot of people just output code and think their trash belongs in production.
Although I agree with you, I had that issue well before AI was a thing:
“I dunno, I just copied it from this StackOverflow post…”
<cut to me raging that someone would do that>
@drmoose @Grandwolf319 Assuming you place zero value on quality, yeah this is great.
half-sunken ship
If you think the ship is ever sinking I’ve got bad news for you…
Is there any plan to fork it? Are there any non Debian systems that use apt?
I’m going to say there’s not a chance in hell that this gets forked. Much like the systemd age verification topic, the outrage is primarily from the chronically online and the bots who influence them. This isn’t a population of people who have the actual technical capabilities to do anything productive, that’s why they have such a large online presence.
The outrage on social media is massively amplified by bots which is why these ‘movements’ never get passed the ‘spamming social media with outrage porn’ phase. It’s easy to fabricate and spin up 1000 social media bot accounts to post anti-AI content (ironically using LLMs to do so).
It isn’t easy to fabricate and spin up 100 competent developers who are so rabidly anti-AI that they will attempt to start a major new project
Don’t confuse comments and upvotes with reality. Social media metrics are easy to manipulate.
not sure… but i could imagine devuan (the old fork in regard to systemd) going the other way
Are there any non Debian systems that use apt?
Everything Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Pop!_OS. I don’t think any of them are planning on staying pure.
The fork would need its own kernel, since the kernel itself allows LLM. You’d also need to inspect each and every package periodically to make sure none have started allowing LLM usage and once you remove LLM-allowed packages, that breaks every dependent package as well.
Basically, you’re going to want to move to some form of BSD, or start a new operating system from scratch.
start a new operating system from scratch.
I’m going to start my operating system with blackjack and hookers.
Ubuntu, Mint and PopOS are all based on Debian, so they will inherit the LLM code that Debian inevitably will accept now.
The without disclosure part tells everything you need to know here. If it’s such a benign and maybe even beneficial thing to do then why are you hiding it? What possible reason could you have not to label that? In an open source Community shouldn’t everything like that be known?
We saw this play out with GMO foods:
If it’s such a benign and maybe even beneficial thing to do then why are you hiding it? What possible reason could you have not to label that?
later:
It’s specifically labelled, therefore it must be bad right? If we didn’t need to worry about it, it wouldn’t be labelled.
It’s a good question for the people using it but the point is that you can really verify if someone is using it or not
There are so many levels of LLM involvement and once you make this distinction you actually have to devote some of your limited resources to define and enforce it. So I think it might not be strictly beneficial, but possibly also have downsides.
Where would you draw the line at which point it counts as LLM involvement? Having one run as some sort of spell/syntax checker? Doing some research (and being influenced by it) before hand coding something? Having it create a working prototype and then reimplementing it by hand? If you use code from somewhere else to solve a problem and ai use has not been disclosed for this code, do you automatically have to assume LLM usage was involved or is there plausible deniability?
I think in the end you’d have to use too many resources check it and debate where the line is drawn, when the real question is how you retain human knowledge and engagement within your community.
Just disclose how you used it.
I wonder what’s the reason to make it optional? I think I’ve seen this approach with other projects as well. Isn’t transparency and accountability a good thing? Also, this kind of information helps immensely when reading pull requests or silly bug reports. And Debian acknowledge there might be licensing issues. So it might become some sort of liability to them once it taints everything and we can’t even tell?! So why? What’s the upside? Adorn oneself with borrowed plumes and not being forced to disclose the fact? Or too much bookkeeping?
Because the idea is to judge the code by its quality, not by who or what wrote it.
I think that’s a commendable effort. Usually I do it the same way. Just feels massively unfair to me towards human contributors. I’ve seen the AI pull requests and bugreports come in. And it’s very time consuming to deal with them. They’re long, convoluted, touch a lot of code… There’s frequently a good amount of “hallucinations” in them, because they’re sent in autonomously or by people who don’t know what they’re doing. There might be dozens of them in quick succession as with the larger projects. They eat up time and effort which is now missing to deal with human contributions or wishes. My own opinion is: Transparency would help a lot to prioritize stuff. I mean AI isn’t sentient, and as long as that holds true, I’d rather treat people with respect and the amount of attention they deserve… (In contrast to a level playing field between human and machine… Because the machines will easily beat us by sheer volume.)
True, but I think the kind of people who send those monster PRs either already have AIs cosign it or they aren’t reading the policy anyway. There have also been a number of studies that show LLMs usually ignore this kind of instruction.
Hmmh. Sure. People also deliberately instruct their agents not to reveal the fact. I can empathize with that, because there’s all these people out there yelling at you, and launching shit storms.
I believe the uptake in “co-authored by …” is due to some companies making it the default setting in their frameworks. It’s to some degree Microsoft being nice to us, not necessarily benevolence of the people sending in those PRs. Doesn’t really matter to me though. It’s enough to make me happy if that’s attached to some commit or PR. I don’t care how it got there, as long as it fits the purpose.
Edit: And thanks for your comment. I don’t think I agree. Nonetheless this might be the answer to my question.
I think it’s just the simple fact that there’s no way to enforce it
There are ways to enforce it. Yeah, you won’t be able to make everyone follow the rule, but it’s the same with any law and any public policy and they’re still valuable. You don’t make campaigns against DUI because you expect everyone to stop doing it, as that’s a nirvana fallacy.
Which tells a lot about how good they are. Slop is slop because it’s bad, but a high quality PR isn’t
Conversely… if it’s so benign, why should it have a label?
Not really worth discussing - it’s not benign, and it can be made purposefully not benign by a third party without notification or knowledge. A third party who has already demonstrated a penchant for world domination, both technologically and physically.
Code in general is proven not to be benign
Excuse you my code doesn’t even compile properly, so it can not be malign by definition.
I should hope that open source developers are exclusively using open source models that are trained on open source projects.
I mean, I would think, at least. It seems to me that most of the people in charge of big projects are usually FOSS purists.
That’s part of the reason why AI scrapers are breaking the small web. FOSS purists really have no significant defense against it aside from Anubis.
Real DoS protection comes from capacity, which costs serious dollars, especially in this day and age where botfarms can be hired by the hour for rather cheap and record-breaking attacks seem to happen like monthly.
The alternative is using a CDN, but there are none that align with FOSS ideals. And for CDNs to be really effective, you need them to break open TLS and handle the decrypted traffic, which raises privacy concerns on top.
But anyways…most license agreements would make it a requirement that if you’re using an open-source model, that it be properly attributed, right?
I should hope that open source developers are exclusively using open source models that are trained on open source projects.
Most developers who use these tools (even FLOSS developers) appear to be using the corporate owned models that were definitely trained on both proprietary source code and code that is incompatible with the GPL license. Some EU courts have also already judged that LLM code cannot be copyrighted, which also means it cannot be licensed as GPL.
Currently, all code generated with an LLM has a 3 to 10% chance of unknowingly plagiarizing the copyrighted code it was trained on, and any FLOSS project that uses it is making a huge gamble that their codebase won’t be scanned by corporations in the future looking for violations to sue about, shut down rival FLOSS projects, etc.
Eye contact is benign for most of us. We still give it a context warning in civilized circles. It costs us almost nothing, and lets people make an informed decision what you engage with.
It would be Useful for doing a retrospective on whether AI is helpful or not
Respect to Antoine. Having principles that are worth a damn is a rare trait amongst developers these days.
Looks like I better start learning OpenBSD ASAP. I really like my distro of choice, but if the distro it’s based off of is shooting itself in the foot, I have to switch over massive ethical concerns!
Second I find out I can put a second drive in my desktop, I plan on using it to learn to make something a lot less hostile to the actual people helping develop the OS. And OpenBSD sounds like a fun choice for now… at least until I find they have started betraying the actual people.
It’s a desktop, there should be sufficient space to fit more than one drive. You can also use external drives. I use three on my server.
NetBSD is also worth a look, especially with the MicroVM kernel stuff in 11. You can look at smolBSD to start playing with it immediately.
From what I understand, while OpenBSD is currently not accepting LLM contributions, they mostly made that choice out of legal copyright concerns, and seem like they would jump on the bandwagon when they consider it to be safer legally.
Then I hope now for it to never become legally safe to use LLM code. LLMs have poisoned literally everything pure and holy and I hate them for it!
If you’re worried about LLM generated code you better stop using computers altogether.
No, I am worried about idiots committing llm generated code straight into production without even bothering to review it
So you will check the development process or each project you use? Good luck with that.
So I will drop any project that goes nuts before they get a chance to fuck up my life or work
I’d rather spend my time using technology to spread the word that the creatures who use genAI can become human again through reeducation against genAI. Sounds much more productive.
Sure, just accept you will be using technology build with genAI.
Not much of an issue with that, I feel.
I can tell you for sure that the workers and the farmers did not own the pitchforks nor the materials for the guillotines with which they rebelled against their oppressors.
Return to monke. Literally.
Or maybe just get off the grid
What’s Devuan’s position on this? They already forked after the SystemD switch. Here’s to hoping they also flip the bird to AI.
I doubt Devuan will stop basing their distro on Debian. Or at least I hope they don’t. I specifically use Devuan because it’s basically just OG Debian.
My main issue is that the packages are really behind though. Even more so than Debian.
I wish there was a good in-between. Ubuntu was a good sweet spot, but I can’t stand how they keep forcing their technology on their users anymore.
Yeah it can be a bit annoying at times. I started out using Debian-based distros before systemd implementation, so Devuan with sysvinit just works for me. I’m not the sort of user who needs the latest updates on anything, so it’s mostly fine. I considered checking out Slackware since it also uses sysvinit, but it’s in a similar boat with updates and, frankly, I don’t want to deal with its package manager lol.
Doesn’t really matter because they still use the Linux kernel, which AFAIK allows LLM contributions.
AFAIK they do not yet have an official stance on AI/LLM use within the project.
Not yet. I suppose it shouldn’t be long…
The world needs more people that act on principles and take a stance.
Weird that he didn’t care when Linus Torvalds adopted basically the same policy to the kernel that serves as the foundation of the main Debian distribution. I have an inkling that there is more going on at Debian, not LLM use alone.
didn’t he? have you checked?
the main thing is that it’s an upstream problem. the linux kernel is used in nuclear missiles. if you want to stay on that kernel you have to take what you are given. in your own organisation you can at least try to change things.
Nuclear missiles probably run vxworks or another rtos, not linux
FOSS nukes when?
the linux kernel is used in nuclear missiles
source:
Idk anything about this…but here is my Google results
Don’t think golden dome is actually implemented, though just some trump delusion…but apparently this Redhawk Linux is used in…
I don’t think so. I got no sources or anything, but I think most nuclear missile silos and their software predate the linux kernel. And since we don’t really build nuclear weapons anymore but stick with the ones we already have, I don’t think that the linux kernel is really used in these kinds of sites.
However, that’s me guessing - wouldn’t say that I’m even 50% confident.
If he resigned only now, he didn’t resign before. What is there to check? That is common sense. Linus allowed LLM use and he was fine with Debian building on it. After all, all LLM use is literal fascism in his eyes.
if he commented on it, for one.
He didn’t leave the Linux-based OS for Linus Torvalds himself stating a similar policy for the Linux kernel before Debian did.
Debian has a history of maintaining ancient kernels. But it’s hard to believe that he assumed Debian to just fork Linux…
“AI scrapers break the web, to use this page you’ll need JavaScript enabled.”
The ironic…
